Strings-n-Stuff

Friday, March 6, 2015

This is my first pair of handspun socks, several years in the making. I love how sturdy they feel, yet comfortable. Getting them right took a lot of ripping and re-knitting. The process was definitely more involved than working mill-spun sock yarns, but I'm delighted with how they turned out. Who cares if they're a little bit funky? I don't. (Yeah, especially those side ribs.)

If you look closely, you can see that I worked the gussets differently between the two socks, adding stitches further away from the side rib to avoid an awkward distortion that appeared in the first sock.

The yarn was "chain-plied on the fly", a technique that is a favorite of mine when spinning on a spindle. I ended up with dense, stretchy socks; the Dorset wool is rather bouncy, and I tried to run with that in my spinning, too.

I consulted Cap Sease's book, Cast On, Bind Off to find a bind-off that wouldn't ruin a perfectly good sock. Peggy's Stretchy Bind Off for K2, P2 Rib gave very satisfactory results. (Just last night I was complaining about a great pair of socks that I was struggling to pull off, simply because the bind off is too tight. Word to the wise.)

I love the look of what I call the PGR method for the heels/toes; while still work them with the book on my lap or on my phone (yes, I got both formats), I find it has indeed become pretty easy to do. I remember feeling doubtful when first reading Priscilla Gibson Roberts' claims that it would become intuitive, so it is nice to look back and know that I was right to trust her. I'm grateful for the book, which was part of the swag I received back at the Men's Spring Knitting Retreat a few years ago. It has given me a lot of pleasure in my socks.

I'm also grateful for Carla, who first introduced me to spindles, and spinning in general. Look at me now, Carla!

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A Smidgen of Knitterly Jargon

FO - Finished Object

UFO - Unfinished Object

WIP - Work In Progress

KAL - Knit-a-long; knitters near or far unite over a common project/theme, and more-or-less simultaneously progress through the project. Done well, it can be a very nice way to stay connected over long distances... kinda like watching the same movie while staying on the phone does for long-distance dating. It's a shared process.

frog - I appeal to Theresa Vinson Stenersen's explanation in this article

rip - unraveling your knitting by removing the needle and yanking on the working yarn

tink - undoing your knitting one stitch at a time by reversing the knitting process ("knit" spelled backwards)